Student Government Booster Takes Council Office Position

Hidden under Harvard Hall is a dingy cubicle without heat and covered with ratty furniture. In the office is Stanley S. Butler, a well-dressed 30-year-old with a long list of academic credentials and the dream of becoming a professor someday. What's a nice guy like him doing in a place like this?

Doing administrative chores for Harvard's newly formed Undergraduate Council probably, wouldn't be a good enough answer for most college graduates, but Butler, the Council's new office manager, isn't complaining. He says he loves his job.

"All of the candidates [for Butler's job] were tremendously overqualified," Michael G. Colantuano '83, Council chairman, said of the six contenders. The post, which calls for typing, filing and handling calls on weekday afternoons, pays $7 an hour. Butler has held the job since November 19.

Butler, a Washington State University alumnus with degrees in Sociology and Ethics, attributes his interest in the job to his longtime affection for student government.

"I have a commitment to seeing students actively involved in government," Butler says. "Four years is not a short period in our lifetime--why not be involved in deciding what happens to us?"

A student government activist as both an undergraduate and graduate student. Butler also advised the student assembly at the University of Hiroshima while working in Japan. Here at Harvard, he sees his role not as an advisor, but as a support for the Council members.

"He's more than a secretary," according to Colantuono. "We plan to use all his skills, Colantuono tapped Butler because of his experience dealing with students, his enthusiasm and ability to work well with people.

"He's a one-man support team," says the Council chairman.

Butler moved to Cambridge this fall after directing the World Friendship Center in Japan an organization that runs outreach programs for survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The part-time job with the Council lease him time to complete scholarship and graduate school application and Burlier plants to do graduate work in Anthropology and East Asian Studies most fall.

Gang-MO

For the moment however, his enthusiasm centers around the infant Undergraduate Council. "I'm really impressed with the council." Burlier said "The officers seem to hae their responsibilities and roles very well thought out,". The council is quite efficient particularly for such young organization, he adds.

Even the gloomy surroundings-which he will inhabit until the Council's permanent office in the basement of Candy Hall opens up later this term-don't daunt Butler Neither does the Lagering confusion about the fledgling council.

During his first week on the job. Butler recalls, so many people happened upon the office while searching for the place to pick up Yale game tickets that he began to search for the tickets himself, "I thought may be we were selling them," Butley Laughs

Butler Laughs